Former Avalanche Foundation CEO Joins 0G to Scale AI-Optimized Decentralized Ecosystem

0G Labs announced today that Aytunç Yıldızlı, a member of Avalanche’s founding team and former CEO of the Avalanche Foundation, has joined the startup as Chief Growth Officer. Yıldızlı will lead global ecosystem growth and adoption as 0G positions itself as an execution layer built specifically for AI-native Web3 applications.

At Avalanche, Yıldızlı helped guide the network from its early launch phase into one of the more widely recognized Layer-1 ecosystems, a period in which he focused on ecosystem development, community growth and strategic initiatives that aligned builders, users and narratives into a cohesive growth engine. 0G says it tapped that same experience to scale its developer community and prepare for the next milestones ahead: an upcoming mainnet launch and a token generation event.

Powering AI-native Applications On-chain

At 0G, Yıldızlı’s remit will center on expanding the developer ecosystem, cultivating community and driving adoption as the network brings online infrastructure purpose-built to meet AI workloads. 0G describes itself as the first decentralized AI protocol (AIP): a modular, infinitely scalable Layer-1 that unifies decentralized storage, compute and data availability to support real-time machine learning and AI applications.

“The next era of Web3 will be powered by AI-native applications, and today’s blockchains aren’t built to meet that scale,” said Yıldızlı. “0G Labs is changing this by creating infrastructure purpose-built for AI, unlocking real-time compute, storage, and innovation. I’m thrilled to help shape this ecosystem and lead the charge toward the future of decentralized intelligence.”

“With Aytunç joining our leadership team, we’re bringing on board one of the most experienced ecosystem leaders in Web3,” said Michael Heinrich, co-founder and CEO of 0G Labs. “His track record with Avalanche proves his ability to scale global developer and community adoption. At 0G, his leadership will accelerate our mission to power AI-native applications on-chain.”

0G aims to combine high-performance storage and compute with decentralized infrastructure to handle the computational and data throughput demands of real-time machine learning. The protocol also emphasizes verifiable AI processing and a permissionless agent ecosystem as building blocks for what it calls an “open, unstoppable AI economy.”

The appointment strengthens 0G Labs’ executive bench as it moves toward mainnet, and signals the company’s intent to be a leading infrastructure layer where AI-native decentralized apps can run at scale.